Chilean Priest Recounts the Horror of Life in Haiti
Fourteen people were hacked to death and their bodies burned right outside what used to be his home. Today, he is in Santo Domingo, unable to return to Port-au-Prince due to closed borders and the effective absence of a government.
By Carlos Basso Prieto (El Mostrador)
HAVANA TIMES – On the morning of April 24, 2023, over two years ago, Chilean priest Alejandro Pizarro was inside the house where he lived at the time with four other priests, in the Canapé-Vert area of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. He was conducting Mass when he began to hear terrifying, blood-curdling screams just a few meters away.
When he went to see what was happening, not only did he witness the massacre that had just taken place, but also the beginning of the Bwa Kalé movement—a kind of grassroots organization formed to defend against the criminals who control 90% of the capital.
“The people from my area, where I lived—which is like a neighborhood similar to Ñuñoa—organized themselves and found out that members of one of the gangs were coming to carry out kidnappings. They managed to capture 14 of them and locked them in the police station right next to my house. They killed them with machetes and then burned them at the entrance to my home.”
As shocking as that was, the priest says it was just as disturbing to see that afterward there were no police forensic teams in biohazard suits examining the crime scene (as one would see in Chile), no medical examiner’s office, nothing of the sort. The only state service that arrived later was sanitation, which removed the victims’ remains.
“The bodies stayed there burning all day, and in the afternoon a street sweeper came and took them away, and that was it. In any case, burned bodies are common there. It’s not unusual to see corpses burning by the roadside, and that’s because burning them is a way to make them disappear—as if they never existed. It’s highly symbolic, deeply tied to voodoo,” he explains.
After that event, he traveled to a meeting that was supposed to last a few days in the neighboring Dominican Republic, but shortly after arriving, the borders were completely closed. Since then, the Chilean has remained in Santo Domingo, though he tries from time to time to return to his original destination. In fact, the last time he tried was during Holy Week—but he didn’t make it.
A Failed State
Until 2021, Pizarro served as rector of Infocap, the so-called “University of the Poor,” in Santiago de Chile. Always connected to education, he went to Haiti—where he had previously worked—to help organize a school, something that this time proved extremely difficult.
“At first, expectations were very high, but after two months we realized it would be very difficult due to funding and other factors. In the meantime, I visited a little school we have there, which we wanted to turn into something bigger. I was doing assessments, gathering information, but after four months it became impossible to even reach the area due to armed conflicts.
“Seven or eight months after I arrived, a Jesuit companion from my house was kidnapped. In fact, three Jesuits have been kidnapped, and they demand high ransoms to return them alive,” he explains, adding that priests and nuns are among the top ten targets for kidnappings because criminals know that churches are likely to pay ransoms for them.”
Pizarro notes that beyond the structural problems of the Haitian state, a new wave of migration is now underway, driven by violence from organized crime, which has overtaken Port-au-Prince. One of their main “businesses” is kidnapping.
Amid this eruption of violence came the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, which made the situation even worse.
“Security is now the most critical issue, because it paralyzes and affects everything else—health, education, everything. There are more than 300 active gangs, or at least that’s what they used to say, and today they are ‘federated.’ At first, they seemed like armed wings of political groups, but now they control the politicians. Initially they financed themselves through kidnappings, but now drug trafficking has entered the picture—apparently coming from Colombia—and it’s an easy route to the US, where they buy weapons with the proceeds. That’s how they sustain their war against the few public security forces that exist, which are being assisted by the Kenyans and some other countries,” he says, referring to the troops sent by Kenya, El Salvador, and Guatemala to try to contain the gangs. The largest of these is led by the infamous “Barbecue,” former police officer Jimmy Cherizier, nicknamed for his trademark method of burning his victims.
The New Wave of Migration
Despite the very different economic and social situation in the Dominican Republic, Pizarro notes that “just as Chileans are reluctant to accept migrants from other places, in the Dominican Republic there is a very aggressive crackdown on Haitians, with mass deportations. Last month alone, 32,000 were expelled very aggressively. They’re paraded in jail trucks packed with 60 or 70 people inside.”
He says it is in the context of Haiti’s current disaster that this new wave of migrants has emerged—many using the family reunification visa to go to countries like Chile. However, he explains that most of them use Chile as a kind of springboard to later travel to the United States. Many manage to scrape together enough money for a charter flight after selling everything they own and with funds sent by relatives already settled in the US.
“A vast majority of Haitians have family in the United States. So, what these families do is try to get their people out, because life has become impossible. Young people, for example, can’t study, so they have no hope.”
Despite everything, the Jesuit says, “the resilience of the people is admirable, but there’s no way out in sight—at least not right now, given the sheer number of problems everywhere. The state is practically disbanded. There is no stable government today: a five-person commission takes turns holding the presidency every five months. That makes stable progress impossible. There’s a promise that seems almost impossible—to hold elections in 2026 and rebuild the country—but it’s like magical realism. They keep promising it, even though that date is just months away.”
Along the same lines, he says the economy is practically nonexistent:
“Most people survive thanks to remittances from relatives abroad. Commerce is informal, and healthcare is extremely precarious. Some areas are in a state of declared famine. Leaving the country has also become nearly impossible: there are no regular flights, and the embassies are closed or unstaffed. The only way out is by land to the Dominican Republic, but a visa is required—and very few can obtain one today. All of this means that hope, while still alive for many, relies more on daily endurance than on any real structural change.”
In the midst of this dramatic situation, he recalls that many Haitians’ greatest hope is for France to pay its “historical debt” to them—originating in 1825, when Haitian independence (of 1804) was finally recognized by France, which agreed to withdraw its warships on the coast of Haiti in exchange for a 150-million-franc compensation. Though this amount was later reduced nominally, it ballooned due to the high-interest loans Haiti had to take out to pay it. The debt was finally settled in 1947, but—according to the BBC—if translated into today’s money, Haiti paid France the equivalent of 21 billion dollars.
That’s why many Haitians blame France for the country’s structural problems. The Chilean priest says, “Some French presidents have acknowledged that debt, but it’s very difficult to pay.” Still, despite how far-fetched the idea may seem, the hope of thousands—perhaps millions—of Haitians is that “one day it will be paid, and everything will be fixed with that money.”